Bitcoin jumped 9.90% on Coinbase as October opened

Bitcoin’s U.S.-dollar price jumped 9.90% on Coinbase Exchange during October 1, 2021, carrying the market above $48,000 after a difficult September.

Coinbase’s BTC-USD daily candle opened at $43,828.89 at 00:00 UTC and closed at $48,165.76 at the end of the 24-hour UTC interval. Coinburn calculates the 9.90% change by dividing the closing observation by the opening observation and subtracting one.

That was a venue-specific result, not a universal bitcoin closing price. Bitcoin traded continuously across multiple exchanges and currency pairs, without an official market-wide closing auction. Other contemporaneous measurements consequently produced different—but directionally consistent—figures.

Reuters recorded bitcoin up 9.3% at $47,910 in a report updated at 20:30 UTC, after observing an intraday price of $48,236.08. The dispatch also recorded ether up 10.1% at $3,301 and XRP up 8.5% at $1.0326. Those were point-in-time market observations rather than complete UTC-session returns, and the syndicated report did not identify one underlying exchange or consolidated benchmark.

A broad move with uncertain causes

The rally followed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s September 30 appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. Representative Ted Budd asked whether Powell intended to ban or limit cryptocurrencies in a manner resembling China’s recent restrictions. Powell rejected that intention while maintaining that stablecoins operating outside the conventional regulatory perimeter should be regulated according to their financial functions.

The distinction mattered to traders confronting an unsettled U.S. policy environment. A central-bank chair opposing a blanket prohibition was materially different from promising that tokens, exchanges or stablecoin issuers would remain unrestricted. Powell did not bind Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or banking regulators. His answer also did not prevent targeted enforcement under existing law.

Reuters cited Powell’s testimony as one factor supporting sentiment. It also reported analysts’ references to seasonal trading patterns and increased derivatives activity. Those explanations were contemporaneous interpretations, not demonstrated causes.

The timing alone cannot establish why individual orders entered the market. Coinbase’s candle shows what happened to one BTC-USD market during a defined interval; it does not reveal each trader’s motivation or isolate the effect of a single news item.

What the October 1 record establishes

The defensible conclusion is narrower than claims that one statement caused the entire move. Bitcoin registered a sharp, measurable advance across the October 1 Coinbase UTC session, while independent market reporting documented a similarly large appreciation before that interval ended. Ether and XRP also rose substantially in the Reuters snapshot, indicating that the move extended beyond bitcoin.

Coinbase’s historical-candle documentation adds two limitations. Rates may be incomplete for intervals without ticks, and an API response can contain candles preceding the requested starting time. The October 1 observations must therefore be identified by their UTC timestamp rather than assumed from response order alone.

The open-to-close calculation is not every holder’s return. It excludes fees, spreads, derivatives, over-the-counter activity, other Coinbase pairs and every competing venue. It also differs from an intraday percentage measured from a prior observation or local-time boundary.

Limits of the dated interpretation

Nothing known from the October 1 session established that the rally would continue, that U.S. regulators had adopted Powell’s position or that a specific legal framework was imminent. The event-day record supports a strong market move and a plausible shift in regulatory sentiment—not a proven causal chain or a forecast of subsequent prices.